Special Bible New VA Sec. Insisted on Using for Swearing-In Shows He's Right Man for the Job
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been in shambles for years. Stories of American men and women who risk their lives in service to our country only to receive horrendous treatment from their government are heartbreaking and unacceptable.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to restore the broken VA health system. “Our veterans have fulfilled their duty to this nation, and now we must fulfill our duty to them,” he said earlier this year.
In an effort to fulfill that promise, Trump swore in Robert Wilkie as the new Veterans Affairs secretary on Monday.
Wilkie was chosen to replace Secretary David Schulkin who was fired earlier this year after numerous ethics charges brought against him.
If Wilkie’s swearing-in ceremony — and the Bible he brought with him — is any indication, he’s the perfect replacement.
During the ceremony, Trump explained that Wilkie himself is the son of a veteran who was injured in the Vietnam war.
“Robert Wilkie is the proud son of an Army veteran, an artillery officer raised on the base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. That’s a great place. On his daily walk to high school with the woman who is now his wife, he passed by the Fayetteville VA hospital, which bore the inscription: ‘The Price of Freedom is Visible Here.’ It made a big impact. It was a price Robert saw firsthand through his own father, who was gravely injured in combat during the Vietnam War,” Trump said.
“Robert went on to serve as an officer in both the Air Force and the Navy, then as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, and as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Robert also serves with distinction as Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs,” the president continued.
Wilkie brought his own worn Bible to use for the ceremony, and explained its long and incredible history.
“The Bible that I will take my oath on reminds me of the 100th anniversary of the end of the war to end all wars,” Wilkie said. “It was a Bible taken into battle by my wife’s grandfather who had probably never ventured beyond three or four counties in North and South Carolina. But by the time he was 18, he was marching up the Champs-Élysées into the cauldron of the Meuse-Argonne.”
He continued, “On another part of that battlefield was a young captain of field artillery — my great-grandfather — who left a small-town law practice in Cleveland, Mississippi, to join up with the All American Division, which, by the way, had a reluctant soldier, a scratch farmer from Pall Mall, Tennessee by way of Buncombe County, North Carolina, who would not only earn the Medal of Honor but go on to the be the greatest hero of that war. Private Onslow Bullard, Captain A.D. Somerville, and Sergeant Alvin York — ordinary Americans called upon to do extraordinary things. It is their … descendants whom we are honored to serve. Millions of ordinary Americans who have answered a special call for us.
“Mr. President, I am humbled by your confidence. I am humbled by the prospect of serving those who have borne the battle, those American men and women who have sacrificed so much,” he said finally.
Wilkie has promised to bring “world-class customer service” to the VA, and if he brings the respect he expressed for our nation’s veterans during his swearing-in ceremony to his work as secretary, it’s a safe bet he’ll do just that.
Watch the ceremony below:
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